Those concerned with the current eco-crisis most often look only to scientists and politicians for solutions. In this important book, Patricia Cori invites another, overlooked group—perhaps the most important one—to join the discussion. Beyond the Matrix collects some of the most provocative, forward-thinking interviews conducted on Cori's radio show of the same name, bringing together leaders in various fields of alternative thinking to propose new and exciting perspectives on the future of humanity as we approach the potentially life-changing 2012.

Excerpt

Where Science and Spirit Merge

MaAnna Stephenson

MaAnna Stephenson is known as a visionary thinker, one who fuses science and spirit. She began her writing career with a short story triggering "soul memories" and began her self-education in the fields of technical, scientific, and New Age thought, exploring ancient mysticism and the rational sciences with equal emphasis. After a five-year preparation period, she was initiated as a shamanka. Her training for this initiation helped her to reconcile the rational sciences and the intuitive arts. This process has culminated in the writing of her book The Sage Age: Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom.

MaAnna, your book is an encyclopedia of spirit and science. How long did it take you to research it? A lifetime, I would imagine.

-"I wrote it for myself as a reference tool. Then, my lifetime experiences definitely came into it, but as far as actually sitting down to research the topics for the book, it took about four and a half years."

That sounds like the "scientist" talking, but for sure the intuitive voice was just flowing in on the wings of cosmic intervention.

-"Oh, yes, every day, through the shamanka work! I think most people don’t understand what ‘shamanka’ is. It is the feminine term for "shaman." Most people think of shamans as medicine folk, but not all of them are. The basic meaning of ‘shaman’ is someone who journeys to other realms and brings back information to anchor here. That is basically what I used that for, during all of the research and the writing of the book, because there are just mountains of information to sort through. It is important to be able to pick out what is most meaningful and help connect the dots between all of the topics, because there are so many tangents out on all this ‘specialties-type’ information that is in the book. I try to pull together all the things that can help people connect, to help them see that science and spirit are actually investigating and talking about the same sorts of things—maybe just using different language that the other side doesn’t understand or relate to."

That is what is so exciting about this time of our evolution. On my show, I have had quite a number of people that are right on the same wavelength, like Michio Kaku—I am sure you know him. I remember when I first saw Michio Kaku’s video, which he opened with the statement: "On the one hand I am a Buddhist; on the other hand, as a physicist I believe in the Big Bang Theory, so I have a conflict!"

I was delighted to hear this from such a noted physicist. I try to bring the dual nature of all information forward, because I am myself a channel, and I too am working with information from other realms. I am also a shaman, so I am always looking to help people—even the skeptics—to find their way over to the spirit side, while helping spiritual people get the grounding that we need to be credible, and more—to be connected to Mother Earth.

-"Yes, because a lot of this work requires all of it—the science and the intuitive arts both require much discernment."

Absolutely. I think now more than ever, as the veils are lifting and the dimensions are weaving through each other, that we are going to have to be very grounded at this time of shifting, and this is something that I am really stressing quite a lot.

I found your biography very significant. You talked about your father being an engineer and its impact upon you. Could you share that with us a bit?

-"Yes, he very much had an engineering mind. He could sort out just about anything. No matter what you put in front of him, he could figure it out, and what he taught me was to go through things in a methodical fashion. He taught me how to break big things down into little pieces and to understand the little pieces, and then understand the whole of it: how everything worked in harmony together.
That was really a wonderful learning process.

He was also an artist and a musician, so I got to see his creative side and his expressiveness through that. He was able to balance one with the other. That was really a wonderful upbringing to be around. My mother is still singularly the most creative person I know, because she is not bound by the laws of physics. She surely doesn’t have to concern herself with how things ‘work.’ She just knows what she wants and she can see it. She is very visionary and creative in that way. . . while it was up to my father to figure out how to make it work."

You were fortunate to have the "best of both worlds" in your parents!

-"Indeed I was! I lived right in the middle of that and helped with both sides: I got to see someone create things, and I watched how to make things manifest into the world. It was really an incredible upbringing. All the women in my family, all throughout my extended family as well, are intuitive, so growing up I simply thought that that was what it meant to be a woman: to be female. I was probably close to entering into junior high before I realized that not all other females were necessarily intuitive, in fact. It was a very strange thing to awaken to and then figure out, ‘Oh, you mean everybody is not like us?’"

I know what you mean. When I was a young woman, if I would watch something painful enacted on the television, or if I would see anybody get hurt, I would tell my mother how I could feel the "psychic pain" up my back, down my leg, in my head, and throughout my body.

One day, she asked, "Honey, what exactly do you mean by ‘psychic pain’?"

It was such a shock to me that she didn’t know, and when I finally talked about it to other people, none of them knew either! You grow up with varying levels of sensitivity and so-called "supernatural gifts," but sometimes you have no clue (until someone questions you) that they aren’t common to everyone. That realization and the surprise of its discovery were very much a determining factor for what set me off on the path I chose early on, to serve as a healer, which I did for thirty years. I can feel the pain of others physically in my body, mirroring their own, which, of course, is an amazing tool when you are healing others.

So, I do understand what you mean and I am sure this was something that really triggered you, when you came to terms with the fact that not everybody is an intuitive… and that you had this gift of vision.

Yes, it most certainly did. It has shown me a lot of ways of moving in the world, and it has really helped me to balance one thing with another, because of all the different things that I am into. If it is creative, I am there. With music, with engineering, with everything I do, I have found that one thing helps balance another out, helping to give me perspective and a diversity of knowledge.

I believe that diversity is really important. We have overspecialized to the point that so very often, the right hand doesn’t know the left hand is there . . .much less what it is doing! People don’t realize how one thing affects another, because they don’t look beyond whatever it is that they are concentrating on, to see a bigger picture.

I think now is the time to ‘be’ Leonardo da Vinci. He was willing to look at everything from every angle, and that is how he was able to bring such wondrous things into manifestation: things that had never been thought before him. He was willing to be an artist, just as he was willing to be an engineer, and he was willing to combine them, finding great value in what he could learn through the rational, and what he could learn through the intuitive.

He had the capacity to bring all of those experiences to bear into manifesting something that had never existed on the face of the Earth. With all the specializations that we have now, it is time for that kind of appreciation of knowledge and experience, drawing from all aspects of learning, to help give a check and balance to what we are doing, so that we can find a different way to move forward."

I like that idea of "being Leonardo da Vinci," a true visionary and seeker of truth, probably in many lifetimes. He is a powerful icon, in which we can find much inspiration of what we can achieve.

As for the material: in the book, you present a fascinating concept about the "body antenna"—if you could explain that for us?

-"That is actually what motivated me to do the research in the first place. We are learning how the body is actually a multifaceted antenna system that receives lots of different kinds of information. That includes your physical body, all the way from your bones down to the cellular level of your existence. The brain processes the physical information that is coming in, and then there is also the subtle energy in your body that interprets information coming in from that way, as well. The mind-body antenna coordinates the whole thing and takes in information from everywhere.

Much of my book is devoted to that concept, showing how physical antennae work like radio broadcast and TV antennae. It also delves into perspectives on how things like yoga and tai chi, which move our bodies through different ritual positions, help facilitate receiving these frequencies. We position ourselves just like we change the rabbit ears on an old TV set, and move through these different energy waves, like a radio scanner that moves through different bands of frequencies to pull in information."

It will be interesting also to talk about how interacting with other people, with different body language, can create the harmonics to receive their vibration.

-"When you mirror someone else, you are setting your body antenna exactly as theirs and, in broadcast terms, that is how antennae receive. When you shape your antenna exactly like the waveform that is coming in, that is the best reception that you can have. When you put your body in the same length and same orientation to the earth plane as the person that you are dialoguing with, it brings you into more synchronistic thought with that person.

Good salespeople and counselors know this, and they mirror the other person for that reason."